Kerkorian's Casino Empire
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Sam Parr shares the story of Kirk Kerkorian, an Armenian immigrant who became a billionaire through airlines and casinos.
"Kirk Kerkorian was born in the early 1920s, an Armenian immigrant born in Fresno, California who spoke Armenian and didn't speak English. He dropped out of 8th grade and came from nothing.
He learned to fly planes during World War 2 because he didn't want to be shooting guns. After the war, he saved up $2,000 and bought a Cessna plane for $5,000. His first business was flying people from California to Las Vegas in the fifties and sixties when Vegas wasn't really a thing yet. He flew rich Hollywood folks who wanted to gamble there for weekends.
Through his gambling and flying business, he kept buying more planes. By his mid-40s, he was making the equivalent of $2 million a year in profit. He sold the airline business for $10 million (equivalent to $90 million today). With that money, he bought land and built the Pink Flamingo Hotel, one of the first big gambling hotels in Las Vegas.
He kept growing and in his 50s and 60s started buying other companies like MGM, which was a movie studio. By 85 years old, he bought 10% of GM, and at 88 tried to buy the entire Chrysler company for $30 billion but didn't quite get it done.
What's fascinating is he never had formal education - he was like a Wall Street guy who wasn't actually on Wall Street. He was very private, only giving 3-4 interviews ever. He kept making deals until he died at 94 years old with a net worth of about $15 billion."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.